Dreaming of A Beautiful Bedroom: Decor Inspiration

The work on the bedroom is progressing nicely, and we are finally at the stage where we can start thinking about bedroom décor. Well, thinking seriously about it at any rate – if you follow me on Pinterest you’ll know I’ve been dreaming for months. In fact, if you glance at my Bedroom board, you’ll get a pretty good idea of where I am going with this post…all so beautiful. You can see on one I’ve commented ‘If I can get anything close to this I’ll be happy’, and, well, I think I can!

So we had a pretty much blank slate and I wanted to inject some life by going to town with the colour scheme and giving it some new stylish features. I may have actually already painted the room as you may know from my Instagram colour woes (Oh, and head on over and check out my lovely pics from our last couple of weekends – one in Suffolk and one in France! It’s a miracle anything has happened on the bedroom at all really). We bought a can of Farrow & Ball Manor House Grey when our local Homebase was closing for just a tenner (wah, bargain! Why did I not buy the entire shelf?) without any real idea of where it would go, because when can you not find a use for such a versatile shade? I wanted one grey wall behind the bed, to go with my beautiful grey linen sheets, and it turns out it was the perfect shade. I originally picked a Valspar paint in lavender to go on the other walls, but stupidly (and I really ought to know better by now) I didn’t test it first, I just went ahead with painting, and surprise surprise, I didn’t like it at all. It was too blue and cold for the bedroom, and had the opposite feel to the soft romantic look that lavender had in my head. Luckily, I had a half used pot of B&Q Colours in Tutu, a lovely dusky pink, which turned out to be perfect. Why I didn’t think of that first I have no idea, other than that it was down in the spider cellar which I tend to block out of my mind (because it is full of giant arachnids resembling false widows but which are actually a rare species of cave spider (we know because our neighbour sent a deceased one to the Natural History Museum for identification) which obviously feels at home with the thick Yorkshire stone walls and damp problem).

So, the colour scheme was born – shades of grey and dusky pink. A winning combination for bedroom décor in my mind.

Credit: Derek Swalwell

Next up, what to do with the room to give it some style? It already had built in wardrobes from the 50s, which are incredibly solid and well made, but which were ugly as anything. I looked into the cost of new, more stylish built-ins, and the prices came back as being around four times what we wanted to spend on the entire renovation. So the solution was to prettify the existing wardrobes, and also to build a matching, smaller single one on the other side of the fireplace, where there are currently only a few shelves. Something like this:

Credit: Paul Craig for Heart Home Magazine

And then I wanted to go one step further and add moulding to make the doors look more expensive and interesting. These are so simple yet so beautiful, and that colour is lovely:

Credit: Romilly Saumarez Smith

I have actually finished the moulding now (you can see a sneak peek on my Instagram) and after the big reveal I’ll post a tutorial. It was quite simple and the results are pretty amazing in terms of the difference it makes to the room.

Having decided on the colour of the main wall in the bedroom, I started to think about how I could make more of it. Shelves didn’t seem quite right, because I’m not sure how strong our walls are anyway, nor did just hanging some art. I felt it would all still be too bare when all we would have against it would be a bed and two bedside tables – that’s a lot of wall space to fill. It needed some structure somehow. Having been pinning lots of panelling for wardrobe doors, I also realised it would be the perfect thing to add above the bed. I don’t think we could DIY something this incredible, but it is certainly do-able on some level, as Kimberley who blogs at Swoonworthy demonstrated in her amazing dining room renovation – go and check it out, the woman is a design genius (and also has the best collection of gold glassware I’ve ever seen. Cocktails at hers must be brilliant).

Credit: Felix Forest for Vogue Living Australia

So, panelled wardrobe doors and walls, grey and dusky pink…what of the furniture? Well, our bed has to go. I have had it ten years and in all that time I have never had a mattress that fits it – it is Ikea King, my mattress is UK King. This didn’t bother me so much until Ste moved in, because now the mattress always shifts all the way over to his side, leaving me with a foot of slats and the edge of the bed a mile away, making my bedside table out of reach and the cause of many a bashed shin in the middle of the night. Now, the cheaper solution would be to buy an Ikea mattress, but I am actually not keen on the bed frame anyway. It is a very low pine one, which is perfectly fine, but very uncomfy to lounge in of a weekend morning with a cup of coffee. I am in search of a big padded headboard I can sit all the way up against and still be comfy (no, I’m not thinking of just working from bed every day, though it may become tempting I admit!). I’m very drawn to French style and would love an antique corbeille bed, and was researching them on eBay, but they all needed serious work such as re-upholstering, and they all had high foot boards, which I want to avoid because our room is quite small. I have found a few I love, e.g. this one on Loaf.com, but they are all very expensive, and I don’t think my Argos shoe boxes under the bed will quite fit the look either, so now we are probably looking at a divan base with storage instead. Fingers crossed we find one we like and can afford soon so we can start getting the room finished!

I already have some lovely antique pine bedside tables, which are a really nice shape (and were an eBay bargain – you know me!), which I may eventually paint to fit in with the scheme, but I’m not going to do that until everything else is in place. I also need to figure out makeup and jewellery storage, and where the giant dog bed is going to go! I plan on using the chandelier currently in the dining room and the existing bedside lamps for lighting, because all the ones I like are far too expensive, and we really don’t have any spare money at the moment thanks to the renovations and the wedding in August! We also need a new carpet, as the filthy beige one that was there when we moved in has really had it now that we’ve had plasterers in and moved the radiator. It all adds up!

So, this is what I’m hoping to end up with, or something along these lines!

What do you think of my vision? Does my bedroom décor work? Anything you would change?

The spare room is grey and blue! 🙂 It’s a great combo too. Basically, I love all the grey! We are nearly finished on it, and I get so excited waking up in a lovely room, knowing we did it all ourselves. Can’t wait until it is done and I can do the big reveal! x

Hi! I’m Anna!

I'm a 30-something living in rural Yorkshire with my new husband and our pets, blogging about our life.

Here you can find tales of the huge renovations we're doing in our 1870s miners' cottage, DIYs and crafts, recipes and food, jaunts around Yorkshire and further afield, life in the countryside, travel tips, latest obsessions and any other thing that takes my fancy! (Often involving coffee). Read More…